SpaceX and AMD Report Quarterly Results Tuesday, Days Before a Large SpaceX Share Unlock

Two Companies, One Afternoon, and a Question Nobody Can Answer Yet

SpaceX files its first earnings report as a public company after markets close on Tuesday, August 4, 2026^[1][2]. AMD reports the same afternoon^[8]. Investors are treating the two releases as a single test of whether the huge money pouring into artificial intelligence and satellite networks is building something real or just burning cash.

The timing is not an accident of the calendar. SpaceX went public on the Nasdaq on June 11, 2026, at $135 a share, raising $75 billion in the largest IPO on record^[2]. The stock hit $225.64 five days later. Since then it has fallen more than 45%^[1]. Tuesday's report is the first real look at the numbers behind that swing.

Here is the collision at the center of the story: SpaceX added Starlink subscribers faster than almost any company in any industry last year, and it is losing more money than almost any company in any industry last year. Both are true. Neither cancels the other out, and that is exactly why the argument over this stock won't resolve on Tuesday.

The Subscriber Count and the Losses Are Both Real, and They're Growing Apart

Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet service, had 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries as of March 31, 2026. That's up from 5.0 million a year earlier — more than double^[1][6]. Connectivity revenue, mostly from Starlink, brought in $11.4 billion in 2025, about 61% of everything SpaceX made^[7].

But SpaceX lost $4.9 billion in 2025. It lost another $4.28 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, on revenue of $4.69 billion^[1]. Analysts expect around $6.9 billion in revenue for the quarter reporting Tuesday^[1]. Estimates for profit or loss per share range from a loss of $1.26 to a gain of $0.33 — a spread so wide it suggests Wall Street itself doesn't agree on how to model this company yet^[14].

There's a second number inside the subscriber growth that cuts against the bullish story. Average revenue per Starlink user has fallen from $99 a month in 2023 to $66 a month as of this March^[7]. SpaceX has been adding cheaper international pricing tiers to reach more customers, so subscribers are growing faster than the money each one brings in. Whether that's a smart bet on future scale or a warning sign depends entirely on which side of the argument you start from.

The valuation math makes the stakes concrete. SpaceX's market value sits near $1.4 trillion — about 70 times its trailing revenue, meaning investors are paying $70 today for every $1 the company brings in over a year^[1]. The company also holds nearly twice as much debt as cash on hand^[1]. That combination only makes sense if growth stays both fast and turns profitable soon. Nothing filed with regulators yet proves the second half of that bet.

A Clock Is Running That Has Nothing to Do With Tuesday's Numbers

Two trading days after the earnings report, on Thursday, August 6, SpaceX faces its first "lockup" expiration. A lockup is a standard IPO contract that bars employees and early investors from selling their shares for a set period after the company goes public — it exists so a flood of insider selling doesn't crash the stock right out of the gate. That period is now ending for a large slice of SpaceX stock.

Up to 911.5 million shares become sellable that day. At current prices, that's worth roughly $116 billion — more than 1.6 times the value of all SpaceX shares currently trading freely on the market^[4]. Nobody is required to sell. But when the pool of stock that could hit the market grows that much larger than the pool that's actually trading, prices usually need new buyers to step in at a lower level to absorb it.

There's a wrinkle that raises the pressure on Tuesday's call specifically. If SpaceX stock closes at or above $175.50 on at least five of the ten trading days before the report, another 10% of locked shares gets released early, on top of the scheduled unlock^[4]. That clause gives SpaceX's management a concrete, dollar-denominated reason to sound confident on the earnings call, regardless of what the quarter's numbers actually show. It's a structural incentive built into the contract, not a claim about anyone's honesty.

AMD Is the Company Everyone Is Grading SpaceX Against

AMD offers something SpaceX can't right now: a profitable comparison point in the same AI boom. Data-center chip revenue is expected to roughly double from a year ago, to about $6.5 billion, building on the $5.8 billion AMD reported in the first quarter^[8][9]. Overall, analysts expect $11.3 billion in quarterly revenue and $1.62 per share, up sharply from $7.6 billion and $0.48 a year earlier^[8].

AMD's pitch is that AI demand has moved from experimental spending to a permanent line item in corporate budgets, with named customers signing multi-year orders for its newest chips^[8]. Because AMD is already profitable, market strategists use it as a kind of thermometer: if AI spending were slowing down anywhere in the economy, it would likely show up in AMD's guidance before it showed up in a satellite company's subscriber count. A Danish investment bank, Saxo, grouped SpaceX, AMD, and Palantir together this week as "three different reality checks" on the same underlying question^[14].

Even AMD bulls admit the bar is high. The stock is up 194% over the past year, so a merely good quarter might not be good enough to move it further^[8]. And its older gaming-chip business is expected to shrink about 30%, to $781 million, a reminder that not every part of even a strong company is riding the AI wave^[8].

Beneath the Stock Price, a Fight Over Who Gets to Control the Infrastructure

Not everyone watching Tuesday is watching for the same reason. Some coverage treats this purely as a financial event; other coverage treats it as a referendum on Elon Musk himself, and on how much of the country's communications and space infrastructure now runs through companies he controls.

Critics, largely on the political left, argue the real story isn't the stock price but concentration of power. The Washington Post has reported that some Starlink customers facing price increases believe the company has accumulated too much control over rural internet access with too few alternatives^[11]. Techdirt, a libertarian-leaning tech policy outlet, has argued more bluntly that regulatory favoritism helped inflate the IPO's value in the first place^[12]. Their strongest piece of supporting evidence is a real regulatory decision: the FCC reaffirmed its denial of $885.5 million in rural broadband subsidies to Starlink, finding the service failed to meet the program's requirements^[13].

That same decision, though, is Exhibit A for the opposite argument. Two Republican FCC commissioners dissented from the subsidy denial, arguing it reflected political hostility toward Musk rather than an honest assessment of Starlink's service^[13]. On this reading, a company delivering working broadband to places wired providers never bothered to reach was punished for its owner's politics, not its product's performance. Coverage favorable to Musk has also focused heavily on what he might announce beyond the numbers themselves — Fox Business ran a segment calling a Tesla-SpaceX merger a "high possibility" topic for the earnings call, even though Musk declined to discuss any such merger on Tesla's own July 22 call, saying it "has got to be done with the appropriate process"^[16][17].

Both sides are arguing from the same underlying fact: SpaceX's revenue depends heavily on government decisions, from launch contracts to spectrum rights to subsidy programs^[13]. Whether that dependence looks like cronyism or like political targeting depends on which government decisions you focus on, and that is not a question Tuesday's earnings report is built to answer.

What the Report Can and Can't Settle

Coverage of Tuesday's numbers already splits along familiar lines. CNBC and CBS News have largely stuck to consensus estimates and subscriber counts, carrying both the bull and bear cases with figures attached^[1][2]. Forbes writes for shareholders looking for trading catalysts. The Washington Post and Techdirt frame the call as being about Musk's accountability and leverage more than about the balance sheet^[10][11][12]. Saxo Bank's research, notably, leaves Musk almost entirely out of it, treating the day as a sector-wide test of capital discipline instead^[14].

Whatever numbers land Tuesday afternoon, some facts won't move. Roughly 10.3 million households and businesses in 164 countries were already paying for Starlink as of March 31^[6]. SpaceX still launches most of the country's orbital payloads. AMD is still shipping data-center chips at a run rate near $6 billion a quarter^[8][9]. A falling stock price doesn't erase those assets — it mainly raises the cost of funding whatever SpaceX wants to build next. And subscriber growth alone doesn't automatically justify a $1.4 trillion valuation, either.

The lockup clock keeps running regardless of what the report says. Two trading days from Tuesday, the market finds out whether 911.5 million newly sellable shares turn into an actual wave of selling, or whether they mostly stay put.